Xiaomi Hybrid IEM Overview

In November 2015 Mi announced a new flagship headphone which should be dubbed Pistons 4.0 due for release on 11(“direct translation 圈铁 which literally translates to “circular metal IEM”). The aim of the thread is to provide information and news about new Pistons. The newest update of the pistons have a whole new design (again), and now feature a full CNC milled casing. The drivers have also been completely changed (details below)

The Xiaomi Pistons 2.0 made quite a big splash in the community by providing affordable head phones at a reasonable price. They followed up with the Pistons 3.0 in March 2015, which featured an all new design. The headphones were well received and received some pretty good reviews (check out the Pistons 3.0 Thread).

Versions

Pistons 4.0 (Klippel Drivers) – Released on 11th Nov 2015

Pistons 3.0 (Spiral Drivers) – Release in March 2015, these pistons are only available in the black version.

Pistons 2.1 & 2.0 (Beryllium Drivers)- This version of the pistons gained a high regard on Head-Fi for their budget price and their stand out sound quality. Check out this Head-Fi thread on these pistons for more information

Design

Updated Drivers: This new update of the pistons features a new set a drivers (yet again). This time they are using what they are calling “Klippel Drivers” (Google search of this yielded hardly any results. If any forum members know more about this please contact me). This is advertised as a set of drivers, one for treble and one for bass. The schematics of the drivers are shown below:

Remote – The remote supports android systems and has partial support for iOS. On android all 3 buttons work and can control the volume. On iOS only the middle Stop/ play button works (tested on iphone 6).

The remote is positioned on the cable for the right earphone, around 2 inches below the earphone itself.